


Bottled Up

by struggling_teen



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Kennedy and Willow aren’t together, Only if ya squint, Suggestive Material, This takes place somewhere in the seventh season, but again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-11 23:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19120339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/struggling_teen/pseuds/struggling_teen
Summary: Willow Rosenberg has been keeping a secret. It’s actually a pretty dull secret, when you look at what’s happened in the past, but it’s a secret, after all.After the robot clone of Buffy had been destroyed by the motorcycle gang of demons, the group had left her pieces among the rubble. Willow came back, alone, and retrieved the pieces, slowly rebuilding the bot in the secrecy of the attic. After a trying time of replacing parts, and shocking herself on split wires, Willow finally celebrated bringing the bot back to life, so to speak. In the time that followed, Willow began to voice her inner turmoil out loud, the bot substituting as a kind of therapist. This routine worked perfectly for them. How might it affect the Wiccan, when the bot, who shares the face of Willow’s best friend- who she may or may not harbor feelings for- begins to make the occasional flirtatious comment?





	Bottled Up

**Bottled Up**

 

  The first of the accumulating occurrences, that have been troubling Willow as of late, had come to pass in a manner that was so dismissable she’d nearly waved it off as her allowing her imagination to run. Willow had been thinking out loud, which was a habit she’d developed in the ample time she’d spent with the robot that looked human, but never quite acted like one. Typically, the dilemmas she bounced off of the hunk of artificial intelligence were more evolved, but what she was fretting over at the time had been a personal matter. Though trivial, she figured it needed to be discussed, so she could at least think without her conscience repeatedly interrupting.

  “Okay, so here’s the thing.” Willow paced back and forth in front of the bot that watched contentedly, only her replicating green eyes moving to follow. “I wasn’t flirting with her. At least, I don’t think I was.” She stilled her movement for a moment, looking distantly at something on the mantle. “So, there might have been the tiniest amount of flirting, but I definitely wasn’t encouraging her!” Her pacing returned as she withdrew her hand from the candle she’d been examining. The bot had risen at some point, and made her way to intercept Willow on her quest to wear a hole through the floor.

  “Do you not like that this potential Slayer wishes to…”, she trailed off as she scanned for the right word, her fingers rising to make quotations as she said the next word, “... _ score _ with you?” Willow was mildly alarmed by the bot’s new use of slang, but rolled with it anyway. She looked at the figure in front of her, so much like Buffy, and yet, nothing like the burdened Slayer she was a clone of. 

  The color of her eyes were a perfect match to Buffy’s, but there was no depth to them. She felt nothing when she looked into them, but with Buffy, she felt everything. When she looked into Buffy’s eyes it was like she could see everything that had happened in the past few years. All the pain, the loss, the tears, the smiles, laughs, and the loves. All at once, like a trip down memory lane. And what a trip it was.

  “It’s not that. It’s just that…” Willow struggled to express herself in a way that the bot could process, finally breaking when she saw the concern coded onto the bot’s face. “I don’t know what she could want from  _ me _ .” Willow gestured to herself as if to prove her point, the bot’s gaze being directed over Willow’s cardigan and floral shirt, past her average blue jeans, all the way to her leather flats, and then back up to her face, which was curtained by her lengthening hair.

  The next two words, uttered casually, and without much thought, shocked Willow greatly. “I do.” The bot had said, while observing Willow’s choice in styling. Her eyes seemed to linger on certain pieces longer than perhaps was deemed appropriate, and when her gaze returned to Willow’s, her irises had turned a few shades darker. Then, as if nothing had happened, her eyes brightened up again, and she exclaimed, “Your wardrobe, though considered ambitious by most, compliments your frame well, and you’re not without the required charms. You are a true intellectual, and a proficient Wiccan. I do believe you are a lesbian, as well?” 

  Willow nodded, her jaw still slightly ajar from the bot’s sudden changes in demeanor. The blonde hair bounced on the exposed shoulders as the bot nodded in a ‘ _ that’s what I thought’  _ kind of way. “I’m failing to comprehend why this arrangement is being considered an issue.” The bot looks to Willow for an explanation, her eyebrows furrowed in the way Buffy might furrow them while frustrated over something trivial. Willow smiled fondly at that, sighing a moment later.

“But what am I good for?”

  “I could think of a few things.” The same look from earlier returned to the bot’s features, but this time to a less potent effect. “For starters, you’re knowledge of magick is beneficial to any combat scenario, and your familiarity with the dark arts gives you a very powerful advantage when it comes to dealing with dark forces.” Willow blinked slowly, as if trying to assess if she was hallucinating, or not. Deciding that it was purely her imagination, Willow had continued her conversation with the bot until she heard a car pull up outside. She powered down the robot she’d been using as a therapist, and put her back in the space she’d made for her in the attic.

  Buffy was sitting on the couch when she returned, her head tossed back onto a cushion. Willow grinned at her exhausted friend, who seemed to have passed out as soon as she’d sat down. She looked younger in that moment. Her face passive while her mind rests. It gave her the appearance of a teen who had stayed up too late, and this was accompanied by a foreign show of vulnerability. It made Willow incapable of bringing herself to disturb her. Instead, she collected the conked out woman in her arms, and carried her up to her room. She laid her on the bed, situating the pillows to be better for her. She slid off her regulation black shoes and her overcoat, before she pulled a blanket over her still snoozing form. She stood to leave, but bent to kiss Buffy’s temple before exiting.

 

  The next incident had been less casual. Willow had powered the robo-Buffy up, but she’d shut down almost immediately due to low battery. Wanting to charge the bot, but not leave her just lying around, Willow lugged her down to her room, or the one that she now shared with Kennedy, she reminded herself, and situated her in her closet. She plugged in the appropriate cables and sat the bot in an upright position, before she closed her closet door. She went back downstairs, preparing to be berated by dozens of different voices demanding different things as soon as Buffy and Faith returned home with the potentials.

  With time passing the way it had, Willow hadn’t realized how tired she was until she crawled into her bed that night, Kennedy following suit. Kennedy kept her distance, but was close enough to not completely avoid physical contact.

“Thanks for the new defenses you put up. Training has been easier without being interrupted every five minutes by some kind of wandering problem.” Kennedy was the first to break the silence. She’d been grateful for the anti-demon borders Willow had managed to put up around the Summers residence since before they’d proven useful. Though this didn’t go unnoticed by the witch, she still appreciated Kennedy’s support, so she softly replied, “It was no problem, really. You have to try what you can try these days.”

  Kennedy hummed in agreement, rolling onto her back, but immediately rolling back onto her shoulder as she hissed in pain. Willow shifted to be able to see the other girl, concern filling her voice. “What’s wrong?” Kennedy tried to play it off as nothing, but Willow could sense the tension in her shoulders, and she noticed Kennedy avoiding putting pressure on her back. Kennedy still wouldn’t divulge what she was keeping from Willow to her after she asked the second time. Willow shuffled closer to the potential, and she slowly grazed her finger over the girl’s arm as she asked, elongating her words, “Kennedy… please?”

  The girl folded like a bad hand of cards, and she was soon describing her day of strenuous activities to Willow. “And in the last drill, I think I may have pulled something”, Kennedy finished, but upon glancing at Willow’s sympathetic face, she quickly added, “It’s not that bad, though. It should heal up quickly. Slayer strength, and all.” Willow’s eyes narrowed, the fib not slipping past her. “Kennedy, you don’t have Slayer strength yet.” Kennedy smiled sheepishly, asking, “Have you always been this quick?”

  “Well”, Willow’s finger slid up the arm it was already resting on, thinking of the years she’d known Buffy, “I’m well versed on the subject.” Willow felt the small shiver that reverberated through Kennedy’s body, a small smirk stretching across her face at the realization of her affect on the girl. “I suppose you would be”, Kennedy’s eyes noticeably lingered on the soft, pink lips before her, enchanted by the way they reflected the moonlight that was drifting in through the bedroom window.

  Willow felt the heat that spread through her cheeks, but she feigned from the reaction, urging Kennedy to roll over onto her stomach instead. Free of the consequences that indulging Kennedy would certainly have, Willow felt a weight lifted from her chest. She moved to straddle the girl’s lower back, hands moving to massage her firm shoulders and upper back. She worked out the knots that she found in Kennedy’s muscles, eliciting sounds of encouragement from the sore girl. She wouldn’t find out, until later, how R-rated her PG attempt at help sounded to those outside of the room, and to those inside of the room, who Willow had forgotten to power completely off.

  Morning came, and went, before Willow had time to revisit the closet in which she’d shut the bot the day before. To her surprise, when she entered her room, the bot was sitting on the edge of her bed. Had she not seen Buffy leave the house in a different shirt, she probably would’ve mistaken the bot for her. She approached the bot, mildly concerned that she wasn’t where she’d last seen her. 

“Hey.” 

  “Good afternoon, Willow!” The bot’s always cheery voice greeted Willow as soon as her presence had been announced. Willow smiled, looking at the enthusiastic bot, who was bouncing her shoulders happily. Willow wondered if Buffy’s actual personality had been taken into consideration while the bot was being programmed. The naive pep that the bot carried everywhere was nothing like the sassy, yet solemn grace that Buffy embodied.

  Willow thought,  _ “Perhaps you have to die to understand life how Buffy does.”  _ As her eyes traced the bot’s familiar figure, Willow realized that wasn’t the case. She approached the bot, who was breathing, but merely because of mechanics, and she knew that death hadn’t shown Buffy the meaning of life.  _ “Or maybe, you have to learn to live.” _

__ Willow shook her head in an attempt to clear her mind, sitting next to the bot on the end of her bed. She let her eyes travel around the room, before they landed on the bot again. “Not that I’m not glad you’re here, but how did you get out of there?” She gestured toward the closet to further emphasize her point. “I opened the door.”, she replied as a genuine answer, sarcasm being a little above her pay-grade. Willow still rolled her eyes reflexively, used to the intentionally sass-filled comments that she normally receives from her vampire slaying friend.

  “I assume you were still turned on then?” Willow poses the question to the bot, glancing from her, to the closet, and back. “Yes, you turned me on, remember?”, the bot crossed her arms in a way very similar to how Buffy would, a small smirk overriding her gracious smile, “And from the sound of it, I’d say I’m not the only one who has the pleasure of being able to say that.”

  Willow’s eyes widened when she processed what the bot had said, a crimson heat already spreading across her cheeks. She struggled to react, saying, “I, uh, we didn’t- it was a massage!” A single eyebrow was raised on the features across from her, the smirk morphing into a smug grin. The bot stood as she playfully hummed a doubtful, “Mhmm.” Willow stood, as well, not entirely certain where they were going, but willing to follow. The bot stood still for several moments of silence, giving Willow the time to work herself up in her mind. Finally, the bot spoke. “This potential, the one who has the  _ crush _ on you, who already sleeps in the same bed with you?” She paused until Willow nodded her head  _ yes _ . She resumed once the flabbergasted woman had, “She was aware that this was a platonic massage?”

  Willow blinked confusedly at her inquisitor, the question taking a minute to sink in. As she did, she came to the realization that she may need to be rewarded for being the biggest idiot to every partake in the fine art of idiocy. The bot, speaking the same thoughts Willow was having, said, “For someone who wishes to not encourage an admirer, you seem to find yourself in rather encouraging situations quite often.” Willow groaned, and dramatically slouched onto the bed again. This continued on for quite some time, until fast approaching footsteps neared her door, and the bot quickly retired herself to the closet. Willow was staring amusedly at the closet door when Dawn came barreling in her room.  _ “How very nice of her to actually conceal herself when others are around.” _

 

__ Willow stands by the kitchen table, holding a hot cup of tea in one hand, and the stirring spoon in the other. With the Slayers, and their potentials outside, and everyone else out of the house, Willow can finally relish in the peace and quiet. Though peaceful, it isn’t very quiet. Her mind is reeling with thoughts of what’s been happening. She sighs as the thoughts of what could have caused glitches in the bot’s programming, and what exactly they mean, resurface in the forefront of her mind.

  She figures damage that was too severe for her to rewire had ensued when the bot was ripped limb from limb. The bot had originally been built to be Spike’s  _ companion _ , and reverting back to her pryer programming is a possibility. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch, but she does wonder why it took so long for the signs to start showing. Regardless, she believes it’s something that she can live with. It’s not exactly dire, and no one else even knows that the bot was fixed, so what can it hurt? It’s not like she’s affected by the not-so-accidental innuendos anyway. Hearing that she turns on the near perfect robot replica of her best friend certainly doesn’t bother her, right?

  Wrong. It does. It so does. She knows it’s not Buffy saying those things, but the words are falling from identical lips, and her voice lacks only the inflection Buffy would have. It’d be so easy to just forget that she isn’t Buffy for a little bit. If Willow would let herself, but she doesn’t. She rebuilt the bot in case they need her for another Scooby-Doo trick one day, and the personal therapist thing had developed on accident. She has no intention of ever crossing any of the lines she’d drawn for herself. That’d be too far.

  She finishes her tea, and cleans out the mug, before she walks upstairs. When she walks into her room, she’s greeted by the site of blonde hair, and green eyes that gaze at her fondly. She wonders why the bot had been left on again, ruling out it being the real Buffy on account of the fact that she is leading one of the Slayer squads outside. She crosses to the bed, and sits beside the bot, not noticing the new bruises on the side of her normally pristine face. 

  Her eyes flit from their examination of the patterns on the bed cover, to the ethereal green of the bot’s eyes. She watches the focus of those eyes shift from her own, to her lips, and back, and it takes her all of two seconds to throw her moral code out the window. Suddenly, her lips are moving against ones not unlike her own, and somehow, still completely different. They’re soft, and at the same time, sure, pressing against hers with want, with need. She hears her name panted in between kisses. Her mind struggles to form coherent thoughts, only one stringing together. That being that she’s taking Buffy’s breath away.

  Then the realization hits her, and she scrambles back, breaking the kiss. The other woman yelps as her surprised jump causes her to slip off of the edge of the bed. She groans as her body slams into the floor, her eyes looking to Willow for an answer. Willow searches her features frantically, her eyes wide. Her voice shakily asks, “B-Buffy?” 

  “What else were you expecting? A reverse Princess and The Frog?” She replies in true Buffy-fashion, erasing any doubt in Willow’s mind that she isn’t really her. Willow’s face reddens, and she hides behind her knees, which she’d drawn up to her chest at some point. Buffy moves confusedly toward the ball of Willow that she had accidentally reduced her friend down to. She reaches for her, pulling her halfway into her lap. Willow finally faces her, her eyes brimming with tears, and her face showing her inner turmoil. Buffy smiles sympathetically, and brushes a few stray strands of hair out of Willow’s face.

  “Will, what’s wrong?” Buffy asks, swiping away a tear that is attempting to roll down Willow’s cheek with her thumb. Willow gazes into Buffy’s concerned eyes, but is overcome with guilt, and looks away. Buffy feels her chest tighten with a familiar pain, and she asks, “Is it something I did?” This causes Willow to face her again, quickly shaking her head. Buffy lets her arm that’s holding Willow’s leg wrap around her waist, so she’s hugging her trembling frame to herself now. “Do you want me to leave?”, Buffy asks, after a moment of silence.

  Willow shakes her head ‘no’, taking a breath to compose herself, before speaking. “I didn’t think you were actually you.” Buffy cocks her head to one side, her obvious confusion written on her face. “What I mean is, well…” Willow pauses, but Buffy’s encouraging look pushes her to continue. “After the robot-you was destroyed, I might have sort of, kind of, rebuilt it, and didn’t tell anyone,including you.” She ends her sentence with a smile that’s really more of a grimace, and waits to be scolded.

  Instead, after several seconds of excruciating silence, Buffy raises a single eyebrow teasingly, and says, “So, you’ve been sneaking around with an exact copy of me, have you?” Willow’s cheeks redden again, and she shrugs,  laughing along with Buffy, repressing her sigh of relief. After her lungs are able to properly process oxygen again, it occurs to her that she’s still sitting in her best friend’s lap. She tries to move, but is pulled back, Buffy saying, “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not getting away that easily.” 

  Willow grins at the person currently holding her hostage, her heart-rate impressively sped up for the miniscule amount of physical contact. Buffy seems to read her thoughts, leaning in until she can feel her breath tickle her skin. “Tell me, Willow Rosenberg, are you the kind of person who doesn’t finish what they’ve started?” Willow closes the gap, writing her answer on Buffy’s lips.

**Author's Note:**

> The title makes much more sense now, doesn’t it?  
> (Bot)tled Up.  
> I think I’m hilarious, and that’s all the validation I need.


End file.
